We’ll take second look at BVAS, says INEC over technical glitches in Anambra election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it will “take a second look” at the functionality of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) after the technological glitches experienced at the November 6 Anambra election.

Reacting to the development on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme, on Wednesday, Festus Okoye, INEC commissioner for information and voter education, said the commission will look into what went wrong with BVAS during the election.

He said BVAS came in “three consignments”, but that the electoral body is having problems with one of the hauls.

Okoye said the commission will speak with its ICT department and technical consultants to decipher what went wrong.

“We will sit down with our ICT department, and also with some of our consultants to take a second look at the functionality of the BVAS and make a determination of what actually went wrong in relation to the 6th November election,” he said.

“We have brought in three different consignments and it seems to us as if the challenge is only with one of the consignment. I think it is possible it is a software challenge or an updating challenge.

“But we are going to go back and take a second look at the BVAS and remove whatever challenge occurred during that particular period.

“We don’t normally roll out any of our electronic solution without doing a test run. When we did a test run of the BVAS during the Isoko south constituency election, we did not have any serious challenge.

“As we move into the 2023 general election, we are going to have so many bye-elections and so many off the season elections, and we assure Nigerians they the situation is going to be put under control.”